


It's Just a Flesh Wound

by RyMagnatar



Series: Highschool Greaser Punks [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Humanstuck, M/M, attempted school shooting, dave saves the day!, eridan makes stupid decisions, hero dave who doesnt want to really be a hero, karkat shows up for a while
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-17
Updated: 2012-11-17
Packaged: 2017-11-18 20:59:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/565230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyMagnatar/pseuds/RyMagnatar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(the happy! ending to Monstrosity)</p><p>You're just following your father's advice. But he probably didn't mean to literally shoot anyone.<br/>Still, you're a good shot and you are grasping at straws. This plan is your your best chance at fixing things. </p><p>You really hope it goes through, where so many others haven't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Just a Flesh Wound

Eridan flings open the front door, startling you from the engrossing episode of Murder, She Wrote. You look up from your knitting and take one look at him. His hair is plastered to his face and his clothes are soaked to his skin. You don’t know where on earth he got that skirt, but right now you care only that your baby is sobbing on the front room floor, dripping rainwater everywhere and inconsolable.

“Oh baby,” you push aside the wool and go to him. “Honey, sweetling, what happened? Are you okay? Did you get lost? I thought you made it there! Did that girl drop you off somewhere? I knew they were trouble from the very first moment! No girl with a skirt that short could be anything but trouble!”

“Mom,” He says between his sniffling gasps, “Shut up. Rox’s fuckin’ fantastic.” He covers his face with his hands, “She’s so fuckin’ great, better’n any friend I’ve ever had before.”

“Eridan,” You sigh. You pull on his arm gently, “Come on my big boy, let’s get you dried off and some icecream and you can tell Mommy everything that happened.” He lets you pull him to his feet, and lead him out of the room.

Getting him cleaned up is no problem. He only sniffles and lets you wrap him up in a big fluffy towel. He balks at you seeing him without the skirt so you let him take that off without you around. Once he’s all wrapped up, you take him down to the kitchen and get him a big bowl of his favorite ice cream. You even put a little whipped cream on top and a strawberry.

He looks up at you with big grateful eyes and sniffs when he thanks you. You pet his wet hair and kiss his forehead. Sitting beside him, you wait for him to finish eating his icecream to tell you what happened.

When he does, the story is shaky and full of more holes than a murderer’s alibi. You let him tell it to you his way, though, and fill in the blanks with obvious answers. The activities he won’t talk about at the party you assume are alcohol and kissing. The people he says are there don’t sound like anyone he’s mentioned before so you think these must be Cronus’s friends really. Then, about half way through the story, he goes very quiet.

Then he says, softly, “I think I broke up with my boyfriend tonight.”

You only hesitate to give him a comforting little pat on the shoulder for a second. You really should have seen the fact that he had a boyfriend, what with the way he looked at Dirk that night. You don’t know how your husband is going to deal with it when he finds out.

You sigh and hug Eridan tightly, “Why don’t you go lay down for a while. I’ll go get your DVDs set up and you can marathon as much history channel as you want tonight. It’s always tough going through a breakup, son.”

He gives you a shaky little smile and goes to the front room.

When you go in to set up his DVD, he’s curled up tightly in a huge blanket so you only see his pale little face. It makes you smile, as he used to sit huddled in his seahorse blanket like that as a child. He had said he always felt safer curled up tightly.

You don’t think anything of it when he asks you to put in his Vietnam War shows. He was so interested in military history. It was such a good characteristic!

* * *

Aranea is coddling the child. She tells you that Eridan had a rough break up at his party and that he needs some time to recoup. You tell her that he needs to man the fuck up and you go in to get him to do just that.

You find your boy sitting on the couch, avidly watching some navy show about tanks. While you’re proud of his very manly interest, you shake your head at his lax behavior. You turn off the show with a switch of a button and stand in front of him, arms crossed. “Get up and get dressed boy. We’re going out to the range.”

His eyes light up when he hears that and that little bit of pride you have for your scrawny son throbs in your heart. Cronus took to the driving and drinking and cars, but Eridan could handle a gun better than you could at his age. He had more interest in them too. You knew you were going to encourage him to join the military when he got older. You were already pushing for him to get into JROTC.

Eridan dresses in  his dark shirt and some good clean pants faster than you can wolf down a slice of cake and presents himself with a tiny smile and full salute. You muss his hair and get him out of the house and down to the range. He’s smiling the whole way, but doesn’t say anything. After  years of driving the forty five minutes out to the range, he’s finally figured out you like silence or Presley in the car.

At the range, he follows you inside like a puppy. You sign the both of you in and get outfitted with glasses and headgear. He checks and loads your gun faster than you can, smiling like he’s been dying to do this for a while. You try to remember the last time you took him out shooting and feel a little guilty when you realize that you can’t.

Three targets into the shooting, with him getting  an excellent head and chest spread, he finally says, “Dad, if people are spreading false rumors about me, rumors that make me look well… really, really bad, what should I do?”

He turns to look at you. You don’t know how on earth his eyes ever got so big. Aranea’s eyes don’t go that wide, and neither does yours. You used to think it made him look like a stupid calf, but now it just looks so strangely innocent. “Well, son, do you know who is saying these rumors about you?”

“I know who started them. And I know who lets people keep saying them. And I know who can clear them, but he doesn’t.” He looks away from you again. He’s checking the bullets in his gun and ejects the magazine, “And I’ve asked for his help, but he says he won’t fight my battles for me.” Eridan turns over a gleaming little bullet over and over in his fingers as he whispers, “He seems to think that I should just man up and handle all this on my own.”

“Maybe he’s right,” you say, folding your arms over your chest. “You’re nearly a fully grown man, son. You should be working on doing things on your own. If you don’t like the way people walk over you and use you, you should take control of their view of you and change it. Take control of your future.”

He shakes his head slightly and you sigh. Stepping forward you take the magazine from him and slide bullets into it, then you hand it to him. He takes it, slides it into the gun with a click and then glances up at you. “Lift your gun, son, lift and aim like you always do. Imagine the gun is your future, the gun is people’s perception of you. Now look out there, out there is the only thing in your way of people respecting you. You want people to respect you? Then you take your gun and you blow away whatever stands in your way. Don’t let the gun control you. Don’t let it knock you back or ruin your aim. Shoot the motherfucker who’s keeping you from being a man.”

You step back.

Eridan looks at the gun in his hands and raises it, aligning it with the target. “Take control of their perception,” he says under his breath, “And shoot the motherfucker keeping me from being a man.” 

His next twenty shots rip the silhouetted paper head into bits.

* * *

It’s been about a week since you last saw Eridan making his way to school on foot. He’d been getting a ride from either his mother or from his fancy new boyfriend for the last week. You’re surprised to see him walking again, but what with you’ve been hearing, you’re more surprised he’s going to school at all today.

He gives you a little smile when you catch up to him and for a while you walk in silence, mulling over what to say. You’d heard plenty from Terezi who heard from Vriska about Friday and even more from Nepeta about Saturday. Which is surprising considering she was high as fuck with her sister and her weird cuddle buddy. Apparently Ampora in a short skirt sobbing like a bitch was memorable even to the higher than a kite crew.

Finally, you decide with, “So are we going to talk about how you got caught with your pants off behind the bleachers Friday or how you got your skirt and jimmies rustled on Saturday or are we just going to pretend nothing’s happened and everything’s happy happy joy joy?”

He laughs, which kind of weirds you out. He was never really the “laugh at my problems” type of kid so you think he might have actually lost his mind. He shakes his head, after a while, and then says, “We can talk about it, but if you really want to know you’re going to have to hear about two very sexually descriptive scenarios and I thought that wasn’t your thing.”

“Ugh, I change my mind, fuck you and fuck that,” you shake your head, gagging. “If there’s any way to omit the sex-.”

“Nope.” He replies. “The first one was me and Dirk and the second one was Dirk and Cronus so, yeah, my weekend was full of sex. How was yours?”

“Not. Thank god. I killed some dragons on skyrim and listened to Terezi whine about the incorrect behavior of policemen on CSI for hours. I can’t decide if she wants to be a cop or a screenwriter more with the way she carries on.”

“Tell her screenwriters make better money and maybe in ten years people will want some realism.”

“Ten years?”

“Yeah, she’s probably not going to be lucky enough to get anything published and seen by anyone with some sway for years. So unless she goes underground and films and puts shit up online and gets followers and fans then she’s got to work through the regular channels.”

“You know she just might be able to pull that off,” you muse. “I hate to say it but Strider has that camera and the music and it’s not like she’s unable to get people to join her machinations and plots. Even Vriska will want a piece of the action.”

You’ve taken about ten steps before you realize Eridan’s stopped. You turn around and he’s giving you this weird sad smile. “Strider,” he says. “You mean Dave.”

You roll your eyes, “You’ve been sucked into the typhoon that is his brother, a mistake I _told_ you was going to fuck you up the ass, and you’re still hung up on that asshole?”

“Nah,” you can tell he’s lying by the way he won’t look at you. “You’re right, Kar. Fuck the Striders.”

You snort, “You’ve done that already.”

He starts walking again, “Not that way. I mean who fuckin’ cares about them or what they say.”

“A lot of people, actually. You, for one, your brother, for another. Half of the school’s population. Face it, being a Strider is a one way ticket to idolization.” You sneer, “Not that they’re even fucking deserving of it. Oh no. All they do is run around and look like sex in leather. It’s disgusting. I wish more people could see what pieces of shit they are.”

He punches your shoulder. “If more people saw what pieces of shit they are there would be a lot less sex goin’ on behind the scenes, Kar.”

“Is that your idea of an obscure jocular reference to my asexuality?” you punch his shoulder back, “Because you’re going to have to get a hell of a lot more obscure to get something like that over my head, Eridan.”

“Well I didn’t mean to have it go over your head at all so,” he shrugs. “But yeah, after today I’ll be done with Dirk and Cronus for good and I’ll be well on my way to havin’ Strider hate me good and proper.”

“You’re such a fucking weirdo.” The words don’t really sink in for a while, and when you do, you’re confused. “Have you got some sort of plan?”

“Plan? Me?” He gives you his false smile. It’s too wide and too bright. “I would never.”

“Oh hell yeah you would. I may not have been around for your childhood let’s take over the world schemes but I’ve heard enough from the Scourge sisters. You have a plan. And you know it’s going to fall apart. Just like all the rest of the plans you’ve been having all semester. Remember the let’s bump into Dave Strider all the fucking time until he fucking notices you? I do. John does. Strider still doesn’t care about you.”

Eridan has the nerve to pat you on the top of your head and say, “I have a plan, Kar, and for your information, he does kind of sort of care I think. At least he tried to warn me about everythin’ that Dirk was doin’ too. I didn’t listen to him and I didn’t listen to you. I shoulda though. I’m sorry about that.”

You’re too stunned to retort. With an annoyed flush, you shove him with your shoulder and walk in silence for a while. He just smiles, humming to himself, with his hands jammed deep in his coat pockets. “Well, for once I hope your plan works.”

“Don’t worry,” he says softly. “I’ve got a backup if it doesn’t. And that one will work no matter what. No one can stop me this time.”

Again, the words take a time to settle in your mind.

And again, they confuse you, just a little.

* * *

“He just seemed weirdly relaxed or something,” you’re telling John at his locker. Strider’s on the other side of him, not looking at either of you. “He even said he had some sort of plan too.” You lean your head over to look past John’s shoulder and say to Dave directly, “He’s got you in his plan. He’s finally going to get over your sorry ass.”

Dave glances back at you. You hate the way the world is reflected in his black shades. “Get over me? He was interested in me?”

John laughs, “You didn’t know?” He shakes his head, “Remember when he said hello to you like every time he saw you, for a month? He was trying to get you to start a conversation with him.”

Strider says nothing, just looks back into his locker. You roll your eyes at him and look back to John. “Anyway. I was surprised he even came to school today. Vriska’s going to be all over his ass about the skirt thing from Saturday. There’s no way she hasn’t heard.”

John nods, “Let me guess. Nepeta told Terezi and Terezi told Vriska.”

“Would it happen any other way?” You pull out your math book with a sneer of distaste. You really hate algerbra. “But he says he has a plan and that after today he’s not going to have to deal with Cronus or Dirk anymore.” You stop, remembering something. “Actually, he also said that whatever his plan was, it was going to get Dave to hate him too. He’s so fucked up. He’s been trying for nearly a year to get your stupid best friend to notice him like a stupid anime senpai story and now he wants to do the exact opposite?”

Dave slams his locker shut, making John jump and you swear. He takes off his bag and shoves it at John, “Take this. I have to find Eridan.” You look over your shoulder towards Eridan’s locker. He’s not there.

“Dave?” John’s shouting after his friend. Dave’s halfway down the hall before you can even bother with calling after him.

“Striders,” you mutter, “so fucking self-important.”

* * *

_No, no, no, no._

Were there always many kids in the hallways?

_This couldn’t be happening._

This place is so fucking crowded. Flooded with idiot kids who have no idea what is happening.

_You knew this would happen._

You knock over more than one idiot, but you don’t stop. You can’t stop. You’re flat out running when you can, running so fast your ribs begin to ache. Why did Dirk’s locker have to be across the fucking building?

_You warned them. You did!_

Across the building and up three sets of stairs. Why. Fucking _why_.

_Why did no one ever seem to listen to you? No one. No one ever listened._

You’re out of breath. Your calves burn. Your shoulders ache from running into people again and again. Then you see him. Squared shoulders and his hands in his pockets. You run faster.

_Did they think you were just lying to them?_

Dirk and Cronus are farther beyond him. They stand at their lockers, closer than normal. Cronus has his hand on Dirk’s hip. They’re oblivious to the world.

_Did they think you were just fucking with them?_

Eridan begins pulling his hand out of his jacket. You see a bit of pearl white in his palm and that’s enough. You tackle into him, grab him and twist the two of you around so you land against the lockers. He hits them with his side and cries out in pain. He slides down a little, but you’re holding tightly onto him. You have one hand on the collar of his shirt, the other on his arm. You keep that hand down. You look into his face.

_Why couldn’t anyone believe you? If they did, none of this would have to happen._

_If they did, you wouldn’t have to be something you’re not._

_You wouldn’t have to be anyone’s hero._

_You could just be you._

You shake him, he thumps against the locker. You lean in close and you open your mouth to talk but you don’t have a fucking clue what to say. You’re not a hero. You’re just a kid who likes music and doesn’t like people pissing in his apple juice. You have simple needs. Why couldn’t others be simple like you?

He stares back up at you. He looks scared first, wide eyes like a caught hare. Then he’s glaring, a furrowed brow and sneering mouth. He opens his mouth too, but doesn’t talk.

It turns out neither of you have anything to say.

“Oh my god, just fucking kiss already!” The girlish voice calls from outside the bubble of your world, the bubble that is all Eridan and speechlessness.

There’s a crack of gunfire as the girl’s voice startles Eridan enough that he twitches. Next thing you hear is screaming.  Next thing you feel is fire hot pain across your thigh. Eridan makes a pain filled noise from under you and closes his eyes.

You look down and see blood on his leg and blood on your own.

You look up to see Dirk trying to pull you away from him. You clutch tighter. You can’t let Dirk have him again. You can’t let Dirk near him ever again. You want to just be an average kid but it seems no one is ever going to let that happen.

“Back the fuck off,” you hiss to Dirk. The pain in your leg is nothing to the wounds you’ve gotten strifing. “And go get the nurse. He’s hurt and we need to get to the hospital or something.” Dirk just stares at you.

“Can’t you just fucking go and do it already!?” You raise your voice. When you do that, it cracks.

Eridan opens his eyes and reaches up. His hand has blood on it. You don’t think it’s yours. Dirk finally backs off.

“Dave,” Eridan whispers, “What the fuck do I do now?”

“I don’t know,” you reply. “I don’t know. But I won’t let you do it alone. You have shitty ideas when you’re left to do them alone.”

He laughs bitterly and winces. “I’m sorry.” His voice is so small, tiny like a mouse, tiny like a scared child’s. Tiny like a lost boy.

You lean in and press your forehead against his, “I’m sorry too.”

* * *

In the hospital, you make sure they put your bed next to Eridan’s. He’s quiet under the scolding of his mother and quieter under the disappointed look of his father. He’s sullen when Cronus sneers at him and doesn’t look up when Dirk steps near you.

Dirk doesn’t know what to say to you. This isn’t something he’s good with. Saving people isn’t really what he does. You think he once would have been really good at it. You think if only he had a good friend, a good goal, maybe he’d sacrifice himself for others, instead of sacrificing others for himself.

Your Bro calls and asks for the details and you twist the story around so it doesn’t sound nearly as bad as it could. He says he’ll be in town in the next few days and that you should go to school only if you can walk. You tell him not to worry.

When the two of you are alone together, when it’s just you and Eridan, he’s still quiet and you don’t know what to say.

Then he starts crying. He holds his face in his hands and hides it as best as he can, sniffling and wiping his eyes and nose repeatedly.

You climb out of your bed and into his before he can argue with you. You put your arm around his shoulder and you let him cry against your shoulder. “Hey man,” you say, “It’s just a flesh wound. And so what if the school punishes you for bringing a gun to school? You’re fine. I’m alive. You’re alive. Everything’s fine.”

He shakes his head. You can’t make out his words. You’re not even really sure he’s saying anything coherent.

So you stroke his hair and kiss his forehead and wait for him to calm down. He doesn’t calm down until he cries himself to sleep against you. You sigh and settle down with him properly, pulling the blanket around the pair of you. “Stupid,” you whisper, “Stupid, pretty boy…” 


End file.
